hi! i was wondering, with daredevil on chip zdarskys upcoming avengers team, what are your thoughts on matt on teams? i feel like he's not nearly included in teams/team-up events as often as other characters, so my question is why - what is it about matt that makes him isolated? It's not like he lacks connections; I remember reading a comic in which he was consulted by the avengers about letting spider-man join, and obviously he's had a close relationship w/ natasha, but he's rarely been involved with the avengers until more recently, but still not a lot, which strikes me as strange considering his popularity and steady fanbase (this might be confirmation bias on my end, but I do think the tv show has made him a popular character.) Anyways, I was curious about your thoughts on matt and teams. bonus question: is there anyone you would like to see matt team up with?
I enjoy when Matt is on teams, though the trade-off is that it often means his perspective gets lost and he just kind of becomes one of the crowd. Matt has been an Avenger before (he was on Luke Cage's New Avengers roster, and he's still a card-carrying reserve member), and he was on the Marvel Knights lineup and then, briefly, part of the MCU-inspired Defenders team back in 2017. But it's true that he does tend to operate solo, and we can look at this from two different viewpoints. From the perspective of Marvel's creative teams and editorial, Daredevil has built up a history as a character with a strong solo title, who works well in his own comic, operating as the main character. Arguably, this is the context in which he is the most popular. Therefore, he's not naturally someone who is going to get picked for team rosters, and it's possible (I can neither confirm nor deny this, but I suspect)--that since he almost always has a solo comic going, it gets logistically complex to have a comic running concurrently in which he is also on a team, which may be why that has tended to not happen very often.
In-universe, as you point out, Matt has a ton of superhero friends. He's deeply enmeshed in the NYC superhero community, and I really enjoy that about him. But he prefers to operate on his own. He has strong ideas about how he wants things done, it's annoying for him to have to account for the behavior of other people, and from that ultra-important sensory perspective, having another person-or-five around him is distracting and, potentially, a liability, especially in a fight. With that said, he has had a lot of wonderful team-ups--you mention the Daredevil and the Black Widow era, and the other big name to include here is his superhero BFF Spider-Man, who he has also teamed up with a lot. As a big Iron Fist fan, I always enjoy his team-ups with Danny Rand, I'm thrilled that Matt is finally getting to hang out with She-Hulk, and I also love surprising, unusual team-ups that put Matt in fun new situations.
Regarding people I would like Matt to team up with who he hasn't, I answered that question here!